'Well, I can give Manylodes a cheque for the whole, dated this day week. You'll be back in town before that. We must allow him £5 for the accommodation. I suppose you can pay the money in at my banker's by that day?'
Alaric had some portion of the amount himself, and he knew that Norman had money by him; he felt also a half-drunken conviction that if Norman failed him, Captain Cuttwater would not let him want such a sum; and so he said that he could, and the bargain was completed.
As he went downstairs whistling with an affected ease, and a gaiety which, he by no means felt, Undy Scott leant back in his chair, and began to speculate whether his new purchase was worth the purchase-money. 'He's a sharp fellow; certainly, in some things, and may do well yet; but he's uncommonly green. That, however, will wear off. I should not be surprised if he told Neverbend the whole transaction before this time to-morrow.' And then Mr. Scott finished his cigar and went to bed.
When Alaric entered the sitting-room at the Bedford, he found Neverbend still seated at a table covered with official books and huge bundles of official papers. An enormous report was open before him, from which he was culling the latent sweets, and extracting them with a pencil. He glowered at Alaric with a severe suspicious eye, which seemed to accuse him at once of the deed which he had done.
'You are very late,' said Neverbend, 'but I have not been sorry to be alone. I believe I have been able to embody in a rough draft the various points which we have hitherto discussed. I have just been five hours and a half at it;' and Fidus looked at his watch; 'five hours and forty minutes. To-morrow, perhaps, that is, if you are not going to your friend again, you'll not object to make a fair copy——'
'Copy!' shouted Alaric, in whose brain the open air had not diminished the effect of the bishop, and who remembered, with all the energy of pot valour, that he was not a mere clerk; 'copy—bother; I'm going to bed, old fellow; and I advise you to do the same.'
And then, taking up a candlestick and stumbling somewhat awkwardly against a chair, Tudor went off to his room, waiting no further reply from his colleague.
Mr. Neverbend slowly put up his papers and followed him. 'He is decidedly the worse for drink—decidedly so,' said he to himself, as he pulled off his clothes. 'What a disgrace to the Woods and Works—what a disgrace!'
And he resolved in his mind that he would be very early at the pit's mouth. He would not be kept from his duty while a dissipated colleague collected his senses by the aid of soda-water.